Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
I'm analytically allergic to sweeping, monocausal explanations, and frankly I think this one is especially deeply flawed.

This is not to say that there aren't important confluences and interrelationships between formal and informal economies, criminal activity and armed nonstate groups/terrorism--such groups, like all institutions, need to generate resources. However, to lump (as this seems to do) all Islamist political mobilization to an epiphenomenon of economic interest, to ignore political grievances and domestic settings, and even to lump very different groups together seems to me to be more about sound-bites (or word-bites) than it is about analyzing the real world.

More broadly, I think there is an interesting phenomenon whereby a variety of audiences--politicians, policymakers, the press, the public, even new CT professionals--look for an easy, engaging, sweeping diagnosis and answer to current security challenges. In my view, not only is it NOT that easy, but the real pay off is in understanding precisely the complexities and variations at work.
The book is an economic analysis. it maybe be limited economic determinism to a degree but i don't think that makes it sweeping and monocausal. Napoleni talks about the emergence of codified irregular warfare doctrines how the US and USSR spread them around the world. Between the Cold War (and especially foreign support for corrupt dictators) and wars for national liberation there are a lot of armed groups. she details how they construct a "state-shell" to create and economy to support their efforts and becuase armed groups, and especially armed revolutionary movements, have to out administer their opponents to perpetuate and institutional their opponents illegitimacy. These state shells are linked in many concrete and readily observable ways. Here is just one example from the book:

"In Lebanon in 1972, George Habash hosted one of the first international summits to form a front against Zionism and Western imperialism. Representatives came from the Japanese Red Army, the Iranian Liberation Front, The IRA, the Bader-Mienhof, and the Turkish Revolutionary People's Liberation Front. The participants agreed to set up an international network which included economic and financial cooperation, the exchange of intelligence, sharing safe houses, joint training programs and arms purchases."

The policies of the Cold War and War on Terror fuel armed groups. Armed groups operate in the same clandestine space as organized crime and intelligence agencies. I don't think it is sweeping or monocausual to detail their economic relationships, how those developed into a real economic force and how that force helps to motivate the War on Terror.

I would really suggest actually reading the book before you write it off. You may not agree with her world-systemic analysis but she gives a lot of insight into how armed groups operate and are funded. Also I bet there is some new information in there that you will be happy to have read and learned.